Local Election Analysis 2019: The Day of the Livids

Last Thursday (2 May) saw local elections take place across large swathes of the UK. The contests were seen as a significant test of public opinion for both the Government and the Labour Party, with Brexit (or lack thereof) likely to have played a major role in the outcome. Many voters were, frankly, livid.

Around 8,500 council seats were
contested in England across 248 councils. The Conservative Party lost well over
1,000 seats and control of more than 40 councils – worse than most commentators
and experts expected. This was worse than even the Party’s own expectation
management spin was putting out. However, Labour failed to capitalise, putting
in the worst performance by the main opposition party for decades, losing seats
and councils in what will likely be marginal parts of the country at the next General
Election. Instead, it was the Lib Dems, Greens and Independents who took
significant ground.

Changes
in Councils and Councillors in England

Party

Con

Lab

Lib Dem

Green

UKIP

Ind/Others

NOC

Seats

3,564

2,021

1,351

265

31

1,178

–

Seats +/-

-1,330

-84

+704

+194

-145

+661

–

Councils

93

60

18

0

0

3

73

Councils +/-

-44

-6

+10

0

0

+3

+37

Projected share of vote

28%

28%

19%

–

–

25%

–

There were also ballots for five single
authority directly-elected mayor posts, and one new combined authority ‘Metro’
mayor position. The latter post, in the new ‘North of the Tyne’ area, was won
by Labour. The incumbents in Bedford (Dave Hodgson, Lib Dem), Copeland (Mike
Starkie, Ind) and Leicester (Sir Peter Soulsby, Lab) all held their seats, whilst
Mansfield saw an Independent lose to Labour’s Andy Abrahams. Middlesbrough saw
the result go the other way, with Labour losing to Independent Andy Preston.

In Northern Ireland, 462 councillors
were elected to 11 councils under a system of proportional representation. The
biggest losers were the Unionist parties, collectively losing 32 seats, whilst
the biggest winners were the Alliance Party, gaining 21 seats. At the end of
the day, though, the DUP retained the largest number of seats across the
province with 122, ahead of Sinn Fein on 105. All in all, it seems the PR
system led to relatively little movement in outcomes. All eyes will now be
focussed on whether – with elections out of the way – progress can be made on
re-establishing the Northern Ireland Executive at Stormont.

A
closer look

On the face of it, results are fairly
obvious. The Conservatives lost big and the Lib Dems were the biggest
beneficiaries. However, it is worth drilling down into the results a little
more where we find results are a little more complicated.

Conservatives

Yes, it was an exceedingly bad night for
the Tories, especially in the East, South East and South West of England – the
areas they have been so strong in historically. Losing the new Unitary
Authority of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole to No Overall Control, for
instance, was never seemingly on the cards and must count as a low water mark
for many a year. Yet the Tories performed better than expected in the Midlands
and especially in the Tees Valley area of the North East.

On a night where they were expecting to
lose seats, they managed to win control of councils in North East Lincolnshire,
Walsall and North East Derbyshire. They also clung onto the key Labour target,
and political bell-weather, of Swindon, and made gains in the previous Labour
heartland of Stoke. It is significant these are Leave-voting towns, in areas
where Labour was their primary opposition, and that these areas are all likely
to contain key ‘marginal seats’ at the next General Election. All-in-all,
though, it was a terrible night for the Conservatives: losing over a thousand
councillors who are also stalwart activists will clearly have a knock-on effect
on future campaigning capability. Plus, there is the added loss of morale
which, in turn, will build pressure on the Prime Minister. If anything the
Party got off lightly. If the Brexit Party had run candidates in this set of
elections, they would almost certainly have lost hundreds more seats.

Labour

If the results were worse than expected
for the Tories, they were maybe even worse for Labour. The Shadow Chancellor,
John McDonnell, had been hitting the TV studios on Thursday night confidently
talking about 400 gains for the Party.

Instead, they lost ground in key parts
of the country to various parties. The failure to hold the Mayoralty of
Middlesbrough, and control of Hartlepool and Darlington Councils, is part of a
growing trend in the Tees Valley region and must alarm Labour strategists. As
will be the inability to win Swindon, which has been a target for them for the
past few years. But it was the loss of 20 seats and the control of Ashfield
Council in Nottinghamshire to Independents that was surely the biggest shock of
the night. If they are losing places like that an urgent inquest will be
needed. In part, it seems like the Party were being punished for vacillating on
Brexit. Feedback from local campaigners suggests that Jeremy Corbyn continues
to be a drag on the Labour vote in more working-class parts of the country.

Lib
Dems

On the face of it, the Lib Dems were the
biggest winners last Thursday. They will be breathing a huge sigh of relief to
have won so many councillors and councils, and the extra campaigning and
fundraising resources that implies. With the birth of ChangeUK, they needed to
put up a good showing; having done poorly might have seen them bleed resources
to that new party, which shares so many positions with them, not least on
Brexit.

However, when you scratch the surface –
whilst the results are good – they signal a reversion to the status quo; ie, they
are finally back to where they were in 2010, before their stint in coalition
with the Tories damaged their standing with so many of their base voters. They
won back many of the local authorities in the South and South West they held
before, matching the ‘back to the future’ gains they made in London last year.

The Party will no doubt to continue to
claim they ‘won’ support in part due to their anti-Brexit position. The truth
is likely to be more complicated. The Lib Dems were the only other party on the
ballot paper, other than the Conservatives, in many parts of the country. They
reverted to their traditional role of providing an outlet for protest voters
who did not want to vote Conservative. In places where there was a broad choice
of candidates, many of their gains were made because their share of the vote
fell less sharply than the Tory vote. A 19% projected share of the national
vote puts them back in the game and whoever takes over from Sir Vince Cable as
leader later this year has a more solid base to build on. The short-term
question is whether the Lib Dems can fight off the emerging ChangeUK Party at the
EU elections, or even whether they should try to come to some sort of deal with
them.

The
Others

Independent candidates did spectacularly
well in this set of elections, which is perhaps the biggest sign of voters
taking a ‘plague on all your houses’ attitude to politics at the moment. And
the Green Party continued its slow but steady rise in local representation
across the country. It may be that the ‘Extinction
Rebellion’ environmental protests in London in the run-up to the election
may have helped their cause, but there is definitely a trend of them becoming
more mainstream.

They will be hopeful for additional
gains in the Euro elections in a few weeks’ time. Labour will be hoping that a
stronger Green Party does not take votes from its left-wing when the next
General Election comes.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the
demise of UKIP. Even in elections where Brexit formed such a large part of the
backdrop, they lost more than four-fifths of their councillor base. With the
Brexit Party set to do well in the Euro elections, is there any role for UKIP
in future, other than as a fringe Party of the right-wing?